BODY CONSCIOUSNESS
by Sarah Zitin
To quote one of my favorite teachers and healers, Louise Hay, once again, “May this offering help you find the place within where you know your own self-worth, the part of you that is pure love and self-acceptance. What we think about ourselves becomes the truth for us.”
How perfect is this? Here we hold the secret in our own hands, and the knowledge of this is the greatest gift of all. We get to CHOOSE, at every moment, how to SEE ourselves. I love the phrase in the film “AVATAR” where James Cameron wrote: “I SEE YOU.” I find that so very poignant and poetic because of the depth of meanings that it carries. To me it means so many things: I see you because I see me, I see you because I love you, I love you, I see me in your eyes, I KNOW you, I UNDERSTAND you, I SEE your soul and even deeper… This is what LOVE is, and this is what self-love is—to REALLY see one’s self and to really see others; because we can only truly love another person when we love ourselves-- cliché, and true.
Body consciousness is about SEEING ourselves as we really are and learning to love, accept, acknowledge and appreciate ourselves.
This is one of the treasures in life which separates us from animals—that we get to think, reason, choose, and create how we see ourselves. Did you ever hear the expression, “act as if?” In other words, animals can’t “act” or fake it; what you see is what you get. But with the human race, we get to choose how we see ourselves, make decisions every second and to use common sense and reason as tools to make ourselves feel good. Animals don’t have these options. We are the lucky ones, and because of it, we are survivors. We can rise to any occasion, and our will and desire to LIVE far transcends that of the animals. Our life-force energy is innately clutching and clawing at us, telling us to stick around! It is part of our inheritance as humans. If we even “act as I” as a practice, especially when we are NOT happy, the behavior of pretending eventually transforms us into the “ACT” of feeling better.
We don’t all have “perfect” bodies (“perfection” is subjective and relative!). And whenever possible and when we are able, if we at least work on changing what is not acceptable to us, then we have a chance to have a positive self-image. Our beauty is transformed by what we think of ourselves, and is also dependent on it.
As Reverend Terry Cole Whittaker once said, “What you think of me is none of my business.” I love that! Only WE can decide who we are and how we see ourselves. And how we see ourselves SHAPES and DEFINES our lives and everything about us. We wear our souls and hearts on our faces and in our bodies. Whatever images of ourselves we have carried becomes visible in the way look, act and feel. And it always has everything to do with the impression we make on others. But the most important part of this is that we only have to impress OURSELVES and be worthy of our blessings because that transmits to everyone and all things around us. “Become the change we want to see in the world” is so powerful, emblematic and carries within it a deeper truth. We are a part of something much larger and more profound than we can ever imagine. Our self-perception is only a ripple in the wave of life, so we might as well CHOOSE to see ourselves as a part of the divinity which created us!!